8/30/2010

This work-in-progress is from a TV show that was killed too early; Joss Whedon's Firefly blended sci-fi with the old west in a spaceships and horses post civil war galaxy. One of the main protagonists in the series, Malcolm Reynolds carried a war issued blaster made to look like something from our own civil war. I started building a replica of the pistol by measuring and drawing blue prints off of screen captured images of the prop. A foam core mockup was made to test proportions and once those felt correct I started to build the pistol out of pieces of brass and aluminum, shaping them with a dermal tool, files, and a hack saw. Two years into the project I was offered the opportunity to purchase a raw resin cast of a pistol from the screen used molds, which after painting and weathering was adequate enough for me to use in a display. With this copy in hand I set out to make my metal project more accurate, at this time it is still a work in progress.